Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded for work that led to complex computing

By Ben Brumfield, CNN

Updated 10:48 AM ET, Wed October 9, 2013

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Yale University professor Robert Shiller, famous for his warnings of the housing and Internet bubbles, is one of three Americans who were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics on Monday, October 14. The Nobel committee recognized Shiller and University of Chicago professors Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen for their work on the pricing of financial assets.

Hide Caption

1 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Hansen is congratulated by a friend Monday, October 14, after learning he had won the Nobel Prize. Hansen, Shiller and Fama concluded that while predicting the short-term price of stocks and bonds is virtually impossible, it is possible to forecast over longer periods.

Hide Caption

2 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Fama prepares to leave his home to teach his morning class after learning he had won the Nobel Prize on Monday, October 14.

Hide Caption

3 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Director General Ahmet Uzumcu of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons comments on the organization being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during a press conference in The Hague, Netherlands, on Friday, October 11. The organization won the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to help eliminate the Syrian army's stockpiles of poison gas and it's long-time efforts to eliminate chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

Hide Caption

4 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, 82, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, October 10. Here, Munro faces reporters after receiving the Man Booker International Prize in Dublin, Ireland, in June 2009.

Hide Caption

5 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – In awarding her the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences called Munro the "master of the contemporary short story." The prize committee compared her to the 19th-century Russian great Anton Chekhov. "Munro is acclaimed for her finely tuned storytelling, which is characterized by clarity and psychological realism," the committee said.

Hide Caption

6 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Arieh Warshel, a University of Southern California professor of chemistry and biochemistry, at his Los Angeles home on Wednesday, October 9, after learning the Nobel Prize in chemistry had been awarded to him, Martin Karplus and Michael Levitt. The three received the honor for their work in creating complex computer programs used to display intricate models of molecules.

Hide Caption

7 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Martin Karplus describes molecular behavior as he speaks to reporters at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after being awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry on October 9. The three men's work allows researchers to study chemical reactions, which take place very quickly, at a slower pace using a computer.

Hide Caption

8 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Biophysicist Michael Levitt at a news conference after winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry on October 9 at Stanford University in Stanford, California. The computer programs the men created eliminate the need for some lab testing. One example would be helping to reduce the necessity of testing a new drug on animals,

Hide Caption

9 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – François Englert, left and colleague Peter Higgs received the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics for their research on a mechanism that explains why matter in the universe has mass. The physicists predicted the existence of the Higgs boson particle nearly 50 years before its discovery.

Hide Caption

10 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Confirmation of the Higgs boson helped resolve a longstanding puzzle in the Standard Model of particle physics, a theory that lays out the basics of how elementary particles and forces interact in the universe. This image of a proton-proton collision produced in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland shows characteristics in line with the decay of a Higgs boson, helping prove the particle's existence.

Hide Caption

11 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Yale University professor James Rothman, pictured, shared the Nobel Prize in medicine with Randy Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Thomas Sudhof of Stanford University for their discoveries of how the body's cells decide when and where to deliver the molecules they produce. Rothman detailed how protein machinery allows vesicles in cells to fuse with their targets to permit the transfer of molecular cargo

Hide Caption

12 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Stanford University professor Thomas Sudhof talks with a journalist in Baeza, Spain, on October 7. The trio's discovery will help provide insights into diabetes, immune disorders and other diseases.

Hide Caption

13 of 14

Photos: Nobel Prize winners of 201314 photos

Nobel Prize winners of 2013 – Randy Schekman speaks at the University of California, Berkeley, on October 7 after learning he and two others had won the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Hide Caption

14 of 14

Story highlights

The advancements could help reduce the need for drug testing on animals

Chemists used to use balls and sticks to make models to help them understand how molecules worked. That has vastly changed.

On Wednesday, the Nobel Prize in chemistry rewarded three scientists for work leading to the computer programs used today to precisely calculate how very complex molecules work.

Accomplishments by chemists Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel have enabled programs to even predict the outcomes of very complex chemical reactions.

As a result, computers have become just as important in chemistry labs as test tubes, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said when announcing the prize.

Slow motion

The exact mechanics of a chemical reaction are hard to observe in the laboratory.

"Molecules are lazy creatures. Most of the time they don't do anything," said Gunnar Karlstrom from the Royal Academy. "They just swing around and don't do anything, and then suddenly, when they react, everything goes quick, like that."

New computer programs allow scientists to make models of these speedy reactions and study them at a slower pace, he said.

The three scientists combined the principles of traditional Newtonian physics, which has the advantage of being simple, with quantum physics, which is much more complex but also much more accurate, because it deals with what goes on at a subatomic level.

That has resulted in programs that are simple to use but also highly accurate.

Predictions made by the programs eliminate the need for some lab testing. For example, they help reduce the necessity of testing a new drug on animals, Karlstrom said.

Karplus researches at Harvard University and at the University of Strasbourg in France. Levitt is based at Stanford University Medical School, and Warshel is based at the University of Southern California.

All three were born in other countries.

They received the Nobel Prize jointly and will split the prize money of 8 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million).

Two American scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2012 for their work revealing protein receptors that tell cells what is going on in and around the human body. Their achievements have allowed drugmakers to develop medication with fewer side effects.

Research spanning four decades by Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka on "G-protein-coupled receptors" has increased understanding of how cells sense chemicals in the bloodstream and external stimuli such as light, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize.

This week

Two Americans and a German shared this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday.

Americans James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman, and German Thomas C. Sudhof were honored for discoveries of how the body's cells decide when and where to deliver the molecules they produce.

And on Tuesday, two men who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson particle 50 years before its discovery took the prize for physics -- Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom.

Higgs and Englert's theories of the elusive particle explained what gives matter its mass and played a key role in completing scientists' understanding of the nature of all matter.

Since 1901, the Nobel Committee has handed out the Nobel Prize in chemistry 105 times. In certain years, mainly during World Wars I and II, no prize in chemistry was awarded.

The youngest recipient was Frederic Joliot, who won in 1935 at the age of 35. The oldest chemistry laureate was John B. Fenn, who was 85 when he received the prize in 2002.

Frederic Sanger was the only scientist to win the chemistry prize twice for his work related to the structure of proteins and DNA.

There is a fine line between the science of chemistry and the fields of physics and biology. Famed female scientist Marie Curie of France, for example, won Nobel honors for her work in radiophysics in 1903 and again in 1911 for discoveries in radiochemistry.

The committee also will announce prizes in literature, peace and economics in the coming days.

Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel created the prizes in 1895 to honor work in physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The first economics prize was awarded in 1969.